Talk:The Man With the Iron Heart
I was thinking about this book (which I am looking forward to quite a bit at this point) and HT's other writing, and a possibility occured to me: the number of existing articles edited to comport with this category is going to be higher than brand new articles created. TR 18:54, 2 March 2008 (UTC) That's very true. It occurred to me when you created the category that we could probably fill said category up right now by taking educated guesses on WWII elements. Turtle Fan 13:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC) :If we had something to give away, it would make a fun little contest, guessing how many new articles their'd actually be. :I'll make a prediction on historicals who'll be edited: Truman, Stalin, Marshall, Eisenhower, Heydrich, Hitler, perhaps Churchill. (I also suspect that Dewey really will beat Truman in that book). :On the plus side, Clement Atlee will get his long deserved article. TR 00:29, 4 March 2008 (UTC) ::Odd, I thought we already had Atlee, though now that I think of it I can't recall what for or if at all. No, I suppose not. ::Maybe Silver will declare a contest for the Videssos group, bungle back in here like he owns the place, bastardize half the articles we've worked so hard on, and invite the Redems and Baiters of the world to step right up and set a million little brushfires for us to put out. Turtle Fan 13:50, 4 March 2008 (UTC) :::Not sure why'd take possession of this place for that particular book. TR 18:01, 4 March 2008 (UTC) ::::If he runs a contest for MwIH that involves this site, we may reap a whirlwind. Then again when he did that two years ago it was because this place was a joke and all his other attempts to generate interest had fallen flat on their faces. And now that I mention it, I don't think I've gotten a Videssos mailer in months now, and I don't remember unsubscribing, though I suppose I might have. I hadn't posted there in years and I didn't even read it anymore. :::::He didn't run a contest for OA, so I just don't see him doing so for this one. ::::::He did run a contest for IatD, TG, and DttE, and probably more going back farther. MwIH is this year's heir apparent to TL-191, logistically speaking and the Evidence of the political ascendancies of Florae Hamburgere, Chestere Martine, Jonathane Mosse, Lyndone Johnsone, Josephe Patricke Kennedye Juniore, and the late Strome Thurmonde notwithstanding. The contests are an annual thing, and they happen in the summer, not the winter. Turtle Fan 19:06, 4 March 2008 (UTC) :::::Videssos has been dead. I actually started a little activity when one of our fellow fans discovered a book entitled "Appeasement" by HT listed at amazonUK, with a publication date of 10/2008. This was news to everyone, so I posted the question. Steven Silver informed us that HT had never written nor contracted for a book by that name. TR 18:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC) ::::::What say we start making shit up about Turtledove news and see what the bastard does? Turtle Fan 19:06, 4 March 2008 (UTC) ::::Back to other articles, you got most of the people I'd guess, plus I'd guess some odd references to earlier figures such as Bismarck, Frederick the Great, the Treaty of Versailles boys (another reason to keep "Versailles" open). Mao and Chiang--something about how no one bothered getting involved getting involved in the Chinese Civil War. The UN too preoccupied to help the ROK in 1950, a united Red peninsula--all of these as stray references, of course. Maybe Japan rearms and conquers Australia, just because. More to the point, Germany, United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and France will of course be expanded. Probably Allied Forces and maybe Axis too. My guess is the Allies have to continue to cooperate fairly closely to keep Germany from going on a tear so the Cold War gets pushed back. Maybe the Korean War does get short-circuited after all, and the Arab-Israeli War and all the others, as the superpowers swat their weapons-demanding client states and yell "Not now, the grown-ups are busy!" at them. Anti-colonial uprisers in Africa, India, Indochina, Central Asia, the Caribbean and the peripheral SSRs might get frisky, so we add articles on people like Ho Chi Minh. Oh, and speaking of new people, Adenauer and Tito can join Atlee as well-deserving-and-long-overdue Rick Gossage-esque members of the pantheon of "Historical figure." (A shame it's such a massive category--That singular and lack of capitalization really bugs me, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life editing all the members.) Turtle Fan 18:27, 4 March 2008 (UTC) :::::While all of your predictions sound reasonble, HT's tendency to localize combined with his tendency to only cover a year of time in his standalones means we'll probably get vague mentions of those events in passing. TR 18:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC) ::::::The book's action will be localized but there will still be plenty of room for throwaway references to things happening elsewhere--there always is, as witnessed by the myriad countries that have little thumbnails under different series' names in this wiki. And the prospect of a guerrilla Germany would make a helluva splash, I don't see how HT can run the story through '46 or '47 and let it drop. Remember that interview where he sort of said he wrote it because ending TL-191 on the note he did left him curious about the prospect, surely he'll want to play with it and its implications. The other AH standalones to which we can compare it were written with their own purposes in mind, after all, and they were able to stand alone in short periods because they left you with enough to figure out what happened next: ItPoME just takes a well-known period of history and makes some superficial changes, not unlike Derlavai, and RB, while more creative, still ends on a note that, while not quite one of resetting to OTL, still indicates that from here on out the timeline will look similar enough to OTL that such changes as there are will mostly factor out before the modern era. GotS does not fall into that mode, of course, but while I couldn't prove it I can easily see HT saying "I like the idea of tracking the development of a divided North America over a long period of time, but this time travel business clutters things up too much, let me take my ideas and write them into TL-191 instead." ::::::I've got a feeling it will either cover a few years, be set a few years after its POD and use clumsy "Hello I know you are my brother" exposition to get us caught up, or maybe not be a standalone after all. Turtle Fan 19:06, 4 March 2008 (UTC) :::::"GotS does not fall into that mode, of course, but while I couldn't prove it I can easily see HT saying 'I like the idea of tracking the development of a divided North America over a long period of time, but this time travel business clutters things up too much, let me take my ideas and write them into TL-191 instead.'" :::::Actually, HT went on record saying that the changes in GotS would multiply so fast that he couldn't create a plausible sequel. Of course, GotS took place over 3 years or so, which does counter my argument. Not sure how it impacts yours. ::::::"Actually, HT went on record saying that the changes in GotS would multiply so fast that he couldn't create a plausible sequel." ::::::I knew that, hence my "This is too cluttered." My guess is that HT realized he couldn't make a GotS sequel, but had already grown attached to certain ideas therein and moved them to TL-191. Hence the half-assed POD, perhaps. Meanwhile, I'd suggest something similar has happened: he wants to play with the fallout of his new WWII allegory, but figures it would be neater to move to the real WWII and thus moved to there the idea of a postwar neo-fascist resistance without the baggage of having to make Josephe Kennedye Juniore President while the late Strome Thurmonde receives secret orders from Featherstone in Rhodesia. Turtle Fan 13:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC) :::::I don't disagree necessarily that HT might cram a few years in, just that he tends not to do that. :::::Incidentally, if you look at the cover, it features an April, 1948 date. Given what little has been hinted at, I suspect that the story goes like this: Heydrich survives, goes into hiding and starts hiding away weapons, thus avoiding the Fall of Berlin, etc. While underground, he rallys supporters, and then in 1948, everything goes to hell. How long that will take only HT and his editors know. You are correct that this would change a great deal in the short term. And here I can't help but take notice that HT has been showing more interest in the Cold War. TR 19:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC) So you're saying Heydrich is in hiding the whole time. I was about to mention: Isn't a 1942 POD not having an effect till 1948, or at least 1945, kind of lame, sloppy, or at least unconventional. Maybe someone else impersonates Heydrich? That could make for an entertaining wrinkle. Turtle Fan 13:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC) :After listening to a recent interview with HT, I'm way off. Heydrich survives, figures out in '43 that things might not turn out so great, and begins to create a serious resistance movement behind the backs of the High Command. Shortly after VE day, he strikes. No hiding for him. TR 16:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC) :: Where was this Turtledove interview? Was it online and if so could you post a link? ML4E 02:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC) :::Here's a link: http://www.jlake.com/podcasts/RadCon_5-Int..._Turtledove.mp3 TR 03:00, 8 March 2008 (UTC) analogs to al-qaeda do you think that Heydrich would be seen as the Osama Bin Laden of the Third Reich in this novel? Buk5 23:06, 10 July 2008 (UTC) : More like al-Sadr. TR 23:08, 10 July 2008 (UTC) i think that Germany could be the allies' equivalent of Iraq and you could have Heydrich becoming like Osama Bin Laden, making recordings, threatening bombs etc, just like an earlier war on terror, which could supersede the cold war. Buk5 17:23, 11 July 2008 (UTC) Predictions These posts are only a few months old, but everything I wrote seems to have been the work of a stupid kid. TR 16:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)